MANY Slovaks remember the times when one-day trips to Hungary’s border town of Salgótarján or Poland’s Nowi Targ were highlights of the year. Those who made brave plans to see travel destinations that were unusual for a good citizen of the communist Czechoslovakia had to start making arrangements early, and probably call many important people who knew other important people at important places. One single trip to the wrong destination might have cost them years of unwanted conversations with the secret police.

People who crossed the borders too frequently were suspicious, too. An obedient citizen was happy at home, the communists thought, and avoided the danger of getting infected by Hungary’s more liberal attitude towards private business or Poland’s Catholic traditions, which seemed to survive despite the best efforts of the only relevant political party.Many can still recall the pre-1989 atmosphere on buses or trains. People nervously clutched their passports as they approached the Slovak-Hungarian or Slovak-Polish border crossings, ready to get a new stamp every time they visited a town on the other side of the border, even when they could see it from their gardens. Nervous mothers silenced their children, fearing that the border guards would search for the extra package of Hungarian or Polish candy that they hid under the seat because they exceeded the unofficial quota.

Many Slovaks have a piece of barbed wire that they managed to get from the fence that separated Slovakia and Austria. Shortly after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, Slovaks and Austrians cut it to pieces, driven by the euphoria of change. Many of them stood there burning candles, and at a loss for words, gazed at the place that still bled from the wounds the barbed wire fence opened. They were remembering people who died for crossing the borders and wanting to freely move.

Eighteen years later, workers are dismantling the Berg border crossing between Austria and Slovakia, a spot that two decades ago represented for many a gate to a better and more dignified life.

There will be no need for Berg anymore. The Council of Ministers of the European Union for Interior and Justice unanimously approved Slovakia’s entry to the Schengen area at its December 6 session. Slovakia – along with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania and Malta – is set to enter the Schengen zone one minute after midnight on December 21.

Slovak officials have described the entry as the act of removing the last remnants of the Iron Curtain.

Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák said that Slovaks will finally have their 50-year-old dream of European freedom fulfilled, while Prime Minister Robert Fico compared the entry to the Schengen zone to the Velvet Revolution back in November 1989.Though many walls and curtains have been torn down, some psychological barriers will remain, even after the metal ramps of the border crossings are taken to the scrap yard and border officers are relocated to Slovakia’s border with Ukraine, which becomes the eastern border of the European Union.

Whenever borders get erased and the freedom to move freely is given, people have hopes and concerns. These concerns appear rather petty compared to the historical importance of the moment, but they are still legitimate.

Some Slovak towns hope that Schengen will pour more tourists to the region and they will see their businesses swell. Others fear losing tourists from Russia due to the changes to the procedure they must go through to get a visa in the Schengen zone.

After all, Schengen opens up a significant symbolic gate, even for countries that might be led by people representing a strange transition between post-communism and democracy, some of them stuck halfway in between. No matter what anomalies these leaders bring to the political spectrum, the country becomes part of Europe, with all of its attributes.

However, there is some bitter irony in Slovakia entering the Schengen area at a time when the country’s prime minister manufactured a union with the man who pushed Slovakia to the edge of international isolation 10 years ago. Now when the entry to Schengen is actually happening, Vladimír Mečiar is again part of the government.

Regardless, Slovaks will soon have biometric passports and they will not need to use them when they travel to European Union countries. And if someone decides to travel from Prague to Budapest through Bratislava, they will not have to cross at least two state borders within seven hours or so and show their passport to Czech, Slovak and Hungarian officers.

There will not likely be massive street festivities to celebrate the country’s entry to the Schengen zone, but most of the population is aware of the immense importance of the moment. It’s just that most Slovaks no longer feel the euphoria of walking through different gates towards becoming full-value EU citizens. Now they hope to live the reality of it.

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Bratislava as it was up to the 1960s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YEfgueY172g#t=332sHistory of Bratislava - Pozsony - Presporok - PressburgBratislava
City capital of Slovakia. Settled first by Celts and Romans. As Pressburg, it developed as a trade centre and became a free royal town in 1291. The first university in what was then Hungary was founded there in 1467. The city served as the Hungarian capital (1541 – 1784) and was the seat of the Diet (parliament) until 1848. The Treaty of Pressburg (1805) was signed here by Napoleon and Francis II following the Battle of Austerlitz. After World War I, on the formation of Czechoslovakia, it became capital of the province of Slovakia, and it became the national capital on Slovakia's independence in 1992.
Bratislava is an important road and rail center and a leading Danubian port. A well-diversified industry produces textiles, chemicals, and metal goods; during the Communist period, heavy industry was focused on the production of armaments.

Forests, vineyards, and large farms surround the city, which has an active trade in agricultural products. It is also a popular tourist center. A Roman outpost called Posonium by the 1st cent. A.D., Bratislava became a stronghold of the Great Moravian Empire in the 9th cent. After the death of Ottocar II (1278), Bratislava and much of S and E Slovakia fell under Hungarian rule. From 1541, when the Turks captured Buda, until 1784, Bratislava served as Hungary's capital and the residence of Hungarian kings and archbishops.

The kings continued to be crowned there until 1835, and Bratislava was the meeting place of the Hungarian diet until 1848. Inhabited largely by German traders before the 19th cent., the city then became predominantly Magyar. In the 19th cent. it was the center of the emerging Slovak national revival, and after the union of the Czech and Slovak territories in 1918 it was incorporated into Czechoslovakia. From 1939 until 1945, Bratislava was the capital of a nominally independent Slovak republic that was governed by a fascistic pro-German regime responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Czechs and Jews. The Univ. of Jan Comenius (1919), the Slovak Academy of Sciences, a polytechnic university, a national theater, and several museums are in the city. The 9th-century castle, above the Danube, was rebuilt in the 13th cent. St. Martin's Cathedral, the Franciscan convent and church, and the old town hall are also 13th-century buildings. The new town hall occupies an 18th-century palace, formerly the residence of the primates of Hungary; the Treaty of Pressburg was signed there in 1805.

About this Blog

Decided to start a Blog about Bratislava, and the politics of the country because most of the blogs about Slovakia and Bratislava in english were either brief entries from travellers passing through Bratislava with no idea about the place and commented largely about beer and other "vital issues" like that, or the more serious ones usually run by moronic americans preaching their judaeo-christian hyper-religious extreme-pro-capitalist & oligopolistic anti-democratic religion coupled with their famed grasp of geography.

There are also some Brits that have a slightly better grasp of geography than their US cousins. However brits are largely trying to recreate colonial glories and their grasp of facts in Bratislava tends to be confused even at the BBC. Most of the experiences the brits have are from lager-lout type pissups in Bratislava and use that crap movie "Hostel" as their intellectual compass.

This blog aspires to discuss serious matters with humour and no-nonsense analysis. Its unapologetically intellectual and refuses to allow this term to be ascribed with a negative meaning the way that the word liberal has become negative in the US.

Clearly there is much love about this great city and country, but without pandering to any special interests or prejudices.

Comments are welcome and will never be deleted or blocked if they offer a contrarian view.

About the bear in the picture.
Macko Usko is a bear with a floppy ear, who is a celebrity in Slovakia and the mountains behind him (Tatra) offer the best skiing after the alps. Macko has attitude and is an opinionated bear as you can see.